Gardening Observations from Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada

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Tag Archives: Silphium

That kind of says it all. This time last year the fields were brown, the Larix were dead, the Rudbeckia was just not flowering.

Copious amounts of rain this spring and an average amount so far this summer has brought in the garden great joy to all things growing and, I suspect, all things crawling and slithering and hopping (hello newly arrived rabbit family!) as well.

Here are a few updates from previous posts.

The Canadian Burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis) purchased and planted on July 1 is now blooming:

The Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) started from seed and planted out last year is now eight feet high and blooming:

Garlic planted last fall has been harvested, and my experiment to see if cutting off the scapes does increase bulb size shows me yes, it does:

left – scape cut off; right – scape not cut off

Veggies are all doing well with no or minimal watering – have harvested beans, chard, zucchini, green onions; the spaghetti squash and tomatoes are getting plump:

This Phlox, given by friends, almost didn’t make it last year. So glad it hung in to produce this glorious display now:

When early pioneers were rolling their way across the tall grass prairies of North America, sometimes, in mid summer, they would come across a towering plant with huge basal leaves that often were oriented on a north-south axis. They called it a Compass Plant. In later years scientists speculated the leaves point that way to protect themselves from the burning sun. The plant would be labelled Silphium laciniatum – the same genus as the Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) that I wrote about earlier.

It’s easy to see why – they’re both really tall (the Compass Plant can grow to 12 feet high) and both has relatively small (2″ – 4″) sunflower-like flowers. Carious types of bees love to feed in the flowers and their stalks, if left up all winter, can provide over-wintering refuge for beneficial insects as well. They differ in that the Cup Plant likes moist meadows and tolerate flooding in spring while the Compass Plant, being native to the prairie, likes it dry and can tolerate drought. (After next to no rain during last year’s spring and summer drought, they’ve back in my dry back field more vigorous than ever.)

This is likely because Compass Plants have a really long taproot (up to 16′ deep in the prairies!) that seeks out moisture, even in the rocky, decidedly non-prairie like soil of the County. This root can, unfortunately, make it really challenging to transplant – best to start seeds and plant them where they can stay for many years. They can self-seed but it’s not a fast process – my 15 year old patch has produced only three offspring that I know of, two in the gravelly rocky area where the ‘parents’ live and one in a meadow, about 30 feet away. One plant with a single flowering stalk can, however, become one plant with multiple flowering stalks.

If you can find Compass Plant for sale (perhaps at a local native plant nursery) and you have room, buy it; or, if you find seeds somewhere (Seedy Saturdays in Picton or Trenton possibly) , try starting them yourself. (Read up on how to prepare them for sowing first.)

Let me confess first that I should have known better. In fact, I DID know better, yet I did it anyway. I planted something in a spot I knew was just not suitable, a spot that was already getting a tad overcrowded, didn’t have quite the right requirements, a spot that meant something, sooner rather than later, would need to be moved.

The victims are two pots of Silphium perfoliatum(Cup Plant)I started from seed the winter of 2016. I was excited to see the seeds offered at Trenton’s Seedy Saturday that year – I remembered studying this plant at school and seeing pictures of HUGE clumps growing in a moist meadow near Ottawa. Called a Cup Plant because the leaves grow together at the stem to create a cup that catches water, it’s in the Aster family, and the same genus as the Silphium laciniatum (Compass Plant) – another favourite.

Two leaves joining together at the stalk to form a cup

Many bee and butterfly species are attracted to the small sunflower-like yellow flowers and small birds gobble up its seeds in later summer into the fall.

But did ya see the word ‘HUGE’ in the previous paragraph? And the words ‘moist meadow’? Four to 10 feet tall!! Clumps six feet across!! What was I thinking???

After starting them indoors in four inch peat pots then transferring them to one gallon plastic pots, I planted them in the Island Bed – about two feet from a prized Paeonia tenuifolia (Fernleaf Peony – given to me by a friend many years ago as a root division with a single eye) and three feet from a joyful Acer griseum (Paperbark Maple – which is itself slated to eventually be VERY tall and wide!). I knew they had to be at the back of something and I didn’t want them to be all by themselves in the middle of the yard, not even the front field where it gets very wet (ie floods) in the spring – something the plant actually appreciates.

In semi-desperation I planted them where I was able, thinking I’d have a few years before they (or their neighbours) would need to be moved. Alas, this year, their first full year in the ground, the clumps are already about seven feet high — that’s with flowers yet to spring forth from the top!

Lesson Learned (yet again…): think of the mature size of a plant before planting!